XZero771679666304

You knew that was going to happen.

I have a bad feeling that his current surge may be counterbalanced by a horrendous slump at some point.

Molina is actually a sloth, I think.

Ok, maybe you can just a little. Clearly Ryan has been getting his water from Peter Griffin.

Ryan has been switched out for Bizarro Theriot.

:shock:

Wouldn't mind seeing that Howry guy in at some point :D You know he'll come in and own us.

Reed swinging at balls that aren't even close when the pitcher obviously has no command of the zone tonight. Gotta love that.

I'm surprised the 2-2 pitch wasn't called, but I'm not complaining.

Having to watch the SF CSN feed, and the pq makes me feel like its 1989 and not 2009. I hate WCIU nights.

I have no doubt they can. But I doubt they will.

Yeah, if Ryan starts hitting the ball in the air too much, he'll be next to worthless.

XZero77, Man...come on. Add in Dempter and thats a whooooole lot of Cubs players contributing substantial production to that 08 success. so, Dempster, Soto, ....Fontenot(?), and _____ will all regress while Ludwick, Shumaker, Greene, and Ankiel will all get better. Right. This isn't even about getting better. Ludwick, Ankiel and Schumaker all had "career" years, one of whom is a converted pitcher, and another just blew up out of MiL obscurity. Any reasonable person would question whether or not these guys will even repeat their performances. In 07, Schumaker OPS'd better than he did in 08. Ankiel;s 08 season was identical to is 07 season. You have a case for Ludwick and only Ludwick. Sample size FTW, sorry. Theriot OPs'ed .934 in 2006, so I guess 2008 wasn't his career year, right? In order for a season to be considered a career year (or even a valid sample), playing somewhere in the vicinity of a full season should be a criteria.

well wait, you can't say that dempster and a bunch of cub positioned players overproduced last year and can be expected to fall back, but assume that ludwick, skippy, the various third basemen (last year mostly glaus), wellemeyer, lohse and various bullpen pitchers will all be just as good. Truffle, this is what I mean. Skippy wasnt even that good last year. He was barely league average. In 07 he was better. Im not execting Skip to be Barry Bonds, just slightly above average like he was the last 2 seasons. The 'various' 3Bmen will be replaced by Glause, who is the model of consistency. 120 OPS+ the last 5 seasons. When he is back, I see no reason not to expect that from him. What Barden and Thurston are doing right now is a fluke, but Glaus is a blue print. Between Loshe and Wellemyer, I dont see what the big deal is. Last year they were both like 113 ERA+. That is hardly earth shattering. Dave Duncan has been making scrap heap pitchers servicable his entire career. It isnt that pitched like...i dont know, Ryan Dempster or something outrageous like that. The bullpen has to be better. I did not say great, I said better. Why do they have to be better? Because they were the worst in the league. They are going to be better on default alone. The bullpen can be worse. This "they have to be better" thing is garbage. Ranking wise they were last, but there is room for statistical regression. And guys like Pineiro, Wellemeyer (120 IP over his previous career high) and Lohse (his most IP since 2003) are important because they ate innings. A lot of them. You have a young, shaky pen. If those guys don't eat a lot again, it will put a lot of pressure and workload on that pen. It is very easy to envision a realistic scenario in which things get truly ugly. And don't forget Looper's 199 innings has to be accounted for, and Wainwright and Carpenter won't do it on their own.

XZero77, Man...come on. Add in Dempter and thats a whooooole lot of Cubs players contributing substantial production to that 08 success. so, Dempster, Soto, ....Fontenot(?), and _____ will all regress while Ludwick, Shumaker, Greene, and Ankiel will all get better. Right. This isn't even about getting better. Ludwick, Ankiel and Schumaker all had "career" years, one of whom is a converted pitcher, and another just blew up out of MiL obscurity. Any reasonable person would question whether or not these guys will even repeat their performances.

Really? So its no problem that the production of Edmonds will not be dublicated and that Hoffpair and Theriot both hit just as well as Ludwick? And Dempster pitched like Pedro in his prime? Fellas dont get me wrong. I am not a blind idiotic Cards fan. However I am very confused. As biased as any fan can be, when I look at it objectively I really dont see how anyone would think the 09 Cards are not 3 games improved but the 09 Cubs are equal. Id bet anyone just about anything they want to bet that the Cards improve 3 games and th Cubs regressed 3 games. I honestly dont see how thats not glaringly obvious. For what its worth, that still makes you NL Central champs. No one is saying the Cubs are equal. It's that the Cards 2008 success was dependent largely on factors that can be reasonable expected to be repeated. It's not that hard to understand. Outside of Pujols, the core of the Cards is unproven. Outside of Wainwright, so is your rotation. Outside of maybe Franklin, so is your pen. And Hoffpauir had how many AB's? Theriot OPSed almost 1.000? Huh? Pedro in his prime? Are you crazy? Micah Hoffpauir? He of the 73 AB's? Yeah, that was a HUGE factor. Felipe Lopez helped that Cards out a lot more than Micah helped the Cubs. EDIT: In twice as many AB's as Micah had, Lopez posted an OPS .130 points higher than the previous high for his career, .964. Yes, the Cubs success depends a whole lot more on guys like Ramirez, Lee, Soriano and Zambrano. Of course it does. They are the core of the team. As far as relative importance goes Theriot = Schumaker, not Ludwick. Oh, and Edmonds is really being replaced by Bradley, not Fukudome. I'll go out on a limb and say we get least as much out of him as we did out of Jimmy Ballgame in 2008, which was good production in limited time. And saying names like Theriot and Hoffpauir when I say Ludwick and Ankiel is absolutely ridiculous. Take those guys away from the Cubs and they still win the division. Take Ludwick and Ankiel away from the 2008 Cards and they're looking up at the Reds.

1. The overall pitching in the division is down substantially. Schumaker would have to have 0 improvment with the diluted pitching. Even if he does, the cards stay the same rather than regress. 2. The first time in history that has happened. Likely the execption rather than the norm. Even if he regresses to 120 OPS+, thats a difference in less than 2 wins. 3. The same can be said for about 4 Cub players from last year. 4. Right.Because Duncan hardly ever has below average pitchers pitch 10 ERA+ points above league average. If Carpenter pitches half a season and Wellemeyer regresses, the overall starting pitching remains the same at least. 5. Any team 'can' do anything when the play goes from on paper to the field. Not any as integral to the team's offense as Ludwick is to the Cardinals. Lost in all the hubbub about Cubs players having "career" years is the fact that they were largely role players. Soriano missed over 2 months, Ramirez's numbers were down a bit, and we got nothing much from Lee over the last few months. Zambrano missed time and had a horrid stretch, and outside of Wood, Marmol and Samardzija, the pen wasn't that good. And our best PH, Daryle Ward, stunk. And as far as those who had career years, Fontenot only had about 230 ABs, Reed Johnson's season wasn't even close to his best, and Theriot is actually on pace for a better season in 2009. DeRosa will be missed for sure, the majority of his AB's will be covered by Bradley and Fontenot, so it could be a lot worse. So if you're one of those people chalking up the Cubs 2008 offense to a bunch of career years, not so fast.

so it would remain the same, not obtaing more losses than last year. so after these few amount of games, the poor overall D they have shown is the "truth" but everything else about them is going to "go back to 'normal"? Is 25 games a real indicator or not? If they come down to earth, like I expect them to, that would put them on the same pace as last year with reguard to offense. Schumaker and Greene will produce more O than Miles and Isturitiz, so when everything regresses back to 'normal' they are still improved from last year. That alone would likely equal 3 more wins. Are you sure Ludwick is going to OPS .966 again? Is Ankiel going to hit 25 homers? How much are you going to get from Glaus? What if Greene posts numbers similar to his 2008 numbers (Which he is pretty close to on pace to do)? When is Pineiro going to remember he is Pineiro? What about when Lohse moves closer to his 4.61 career ERA? What if Carpenter spends most of the season on the DL? Will you get almost 200 IP out of Wellemeyer and Lohse? Who divvies up Braden Looper's 199 missing innings? What happens if the pen has to take on an even bigger workload than in 2008? There are a lot of legitimate questions here, and the Cards success is predicated a lot more on production from less proven commodities than is the Cubs. That's not to say the Cards will regress in all these facets, but people are right to expect that they might, and that their chances for regression are better than the Cubs. And for the record, I think most people expect the Cubs to regress a bit after losing DeRosa, and expecting Soto to regress just a bit. Fukudome will be better than last year in all likelihood. But the Cubs success depends largely on guys like Ramirez, Soriano, Lee, Zambrano, Marmol and Lilly. Pujols is a dead lock, but guys like Ludwick, Ankiel, Lohse, etc. aren't remotely in the same category as far as track record and reasonably expected contribution. Outside of Pujols, the jury is still out regarding the Cardinals' core players. And the Cardinals pen? Who knows. It could very well be even worse. Feel confident if you like, but don't act confused when people doubt the Cardinals, because there is good reason.

I think he go a couple of meatballs and hit them about as well as he could, nothing more. If Ryan starts trying to drive the ball with regularity, he's going to go in the crapper in rapid fashion. If Theriot's going to maintain his value to the team, he needs to keep doing what he did all of last year and this year up to this point, which is be a spray hitter with occasional gap power.

OK. So you expect the cards to get a relative full year from Carpenter, blow at a minimum 5 less saves (it'll be hard not to), play in a division that has overall regressed substantially, but win the same amount of games. OK. Cool. How is Carpenter going to pitch a full season? 4 out of 6 months isn't even relatively full, and you're assuming he won't get hurt again, which is far from a sure thing. At this point, Carpenter = Wood/Prior, like it or not. And your pen is no better than last season.

What's done is done, but this may be the most inexplicable move Hendry has made in his tenure. Not at all. Quite a few people recognized that trading DeRosa could be a good move well before he made it. Unfortunately, he didn't get a great return... and he completely bungled his follow-thru. True, it didn't look as bad at the time as it does now. But when you see what has gone on at 3B over the past week, what Aaron Miles has done and watched Hoffpauir play the OF, man, does it look bad. It just cries out for a guy like DeRo. Selling high is always a good idea, but jeezus. At the time I was supporting the idea of trading, I was supporting it while retaining Cedeno to play a legit SS, and picking up a bargain bin 3B backup like Russell Branyan. And I was supporting using DeRosa as a key piece in a larger deal, like for Peavy or Beltran. Yeah, I think a lot of us were. The problem is that Hendry played the rest of the scenario out about as poorly as possible. My initial opinion of the trade has been replaced by irritation over what it led to, which really ended up being less than nothing.

What's done is done, but this may be the most inexplicable move Hendry has made in his tenure. Not at all. Quite a few people recognized that trading DeRosa could be a good move well before he made it. Unfortunately, he didn't get a great return... and he completely bungled his follow-thru. True, it didn't look as bad at the time as it does now. But when you see what has gone on at 3B over the past week, what Aaron Miles has done and watched Hoffpauir play the OF, man, does it look bad. It just cries out for a guy like DeRo. Selling high is always a good idea, but jeezus.

What's done is done, but this may be the most inexplicable move Hendry has made in his tenure.

Tonight's game was a microcosm of being a Cubs fan. You have the lead, give it up, are robbed of the win by an great play, and then a crap ass hit turns into an onslaught. Just ridiculous.

Still haven't told me what you're basing this on. Obviously it's not this years numbers because Kosuke is tearing it up. Obviously not last year's numbers because lee wasn't bad last year. Plus, still nothing on Fontenot, Dempster, and Soto. Kosuke's fine. And before anyone says "he did well early last year before the league had a book on him", let me point out they still had that same book on opening day this year, and it hasn't stopped Fuku from raking. He has adjusted to it. Lee, however, may well be washed up.